Winning or losing media support for regime change: A comparative analysis of UK government media agenda building during the Suez 1956 and Iraq 2003 conflicts. James Thomas Campbell A submission presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Glamorgan/Prifysgol Morgannwg for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 30 January 2013 Abstract This study examines the means by which the UK government sought to win the support of the media in advance of taking military action in two separate conflicts in which regime change was the main government agenda and to which there was substantial internal domestic opposition. This opposition led to the necessity of winning the support of the media in order to influence public support in the lead-up to direct military action and to retain that support during the latter period and up to the cessation of formal military activities. Areas including overt and covert censorship and propaganda are examined in order to determine if they played any part in UK government media agenda building in the military actions being studied. The two conflicts examined are the Invasion of the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt in 1956 and the Iraq War of 2003, both of which are linked in that the military and political aims were regime change in the face of extensive international opposition, were without the fiat of a United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) and took place in the face of extensive domestic opposition. To overcome the third element required and effective media agenda building policy on behalf of the government in power. Previous academic work in this field has been weighted from the media’s point of view, whereas this study examines media agenda building as a part of government and military policy which in itself is an integral part of the act of war. The findings show the conflicts within a media wishing to retain traditional journalistic objectivity and freedom of expression during a time of conflict when there are domestic and patriotic pressures to support the troops in the field and, as a de facto result, support the political agenda The findings also reveal the problems, changes and shifts in government media handling policy carried out in order to retain or win media support for UK armed interventions in both conflicts named here. The methodology involved in the preparation of this dissertation involves a scrutiny of academic analysis of the events, investigation of primary source material on UK 2 government decision-making held at the National Archives, an investigation of contemporary diaries, autobiographies, interview recordings and memoirs of government and media personnel involved in both conflicts and, in the case of the Iraq 2003 episode, personal interviews with key government and media people involved. 3 Acknowledgements My thanks go to many people who have helped in the preparation of this dissertation. First of all, I acknowledge the help and support of my University of Glamorgan colleagues at the Learning and Resources Centre who responded swiftly, and promptly, to my demands of even the most obscure material from the British Library and other sources. Secondly, and a fervent thanks to modern email, I am grateful for the assistance for the staff of the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Libraries in the USA who helped to fill in gaps which, through UK rules, are not yet available in our own National Archives. But apart from that, I do acknowledge the assistance and professionalism of the National Archives staff at Kew and a computer system which is a boon to any academic researcher. Thirdly, electronic access apart, there is little substitute for poring over the personal papers and handwriting of key people involved in historical events to get a real feel of what was happening at the times I was investigating and my thanks go to the staff at the Bodleian Library, in Oxford, for access to the personal papers of William Clark and Lord Monckton, the librarians at the University of Southampton for access to the personal papers of Lord Mountbatten, King's College, London, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, for access to the Papers of the Suez Oral History Project and Chief Archivist Heather Yasamee, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, for a privileged glimpse into papers not yet released to the National Archives. Fourthly, I give thanks to David Stevens, at the Ministry of Defence, who helped to arrange personal interviews with MoD staff involved in both the Iraq conflicts and Richard Sambrook, of the BBC, who paved my way to interviewing his BBC colleagues who covered both of these wars. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my former Director of Studies at the University of Glamorgan, Professor John Beynon, who graciously took on a geriatric PhD student and let him loose on history, and my supervisors Dr Vian Bakir and Dr Gill Allard who rigorously channelled my often misplaced enthusiasm into far more productive paths than I ever would have imagined. 4 Abbreviations ABC – American Broadcasting Company ACDS – Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff ANA – Arab News Agency BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation CIC – Coalition Information Centre CNN – Cable News Network CGS – Chief of the General Staff (formerly CIGS – Chief of the Imperial General Staff) FO – Foreign Office (now FCO – Foreign and Commonwealth Office) FTU – Forward Transmission Unit GCHQ – Government Communication Headquarters IRD - Information Research Department JIB – Joint Information Bureau JIC – Joint Intelligence Committee MI6 – Military Intelligence Department 6 (actually Secret Intelligence Service) MOD – Ministry of Defence MP – Member of Parliament MRT – Mobile Reporting Team NA – National Archives (formerly the Public Records Office – PRO) NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organisation PM – Prime Minister 5 PPD – Prepared Presidential Directive PPS – Principal Private Secretary PSYOPS – Psychological Operations SACEUR – Supreme Allied Commander Europe SHAPE – Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe SUEZOHP – Suez Oral History Project UK – United Kingdom UNPROFOR – United Nations Protecting Force UNSCR – United Nations Security Council Resolution USA – United States of America (often shortened to US) WMD – Weapons of Mass Destruction 6 Contents 2. Abstract 5. Abbreviations 9. Chapter 1. Introduction 18. Chapter 2. Review of Literature 18. 2.1. Background. 19. 2.2. Agenda building as a tool for analysis 25. 2.3 Problematising the notion of agenda building 34. 2.4. Aspects of political communication: the political/media interface. 39. 2.5. Mechanics of agenda building. 45. 2.6. Agenda-building tools 49. 2.7. Media control and manipulation concerns by government in war-time conflict. 54. 2.8. Relationships between government and media and dependency culture 58. 2.9. The pressures on objective reporting 61. 2.10. The debate over media influence and its perceived effect on public opinion 67. 2.11. Summary 71. Chapter 3. Methodology 71. 3.1. Background 73. 3.2. Doing archival research 78. 3.3. Towards a case study approach 81. 3.4. The use of personal experience by a researcher 83. 3.5. Interdisciplinary model and triangulation 87. 3.6. The conduct of interviews. 94. 3.7. Summary. 7 97. Chapter 4. The Suez Crisis 1956. 97. 4.1. Background to the invasion of the Suez Canal Zone. 103. 4.2. Eden and the media in the lead up to military action over Suez. 110. 4.3. Eden’s approach to influencing the media: tactical rather than strategic. 121. 4.4. Crossing the line between media handling and propaganda. 131. 4.5. The Protocol of Sèvres and the “excuse” for invasion. 135. 4.6. Attempts to censor the BBC. 143. 4.7. Nasser v Eden: Comparisons in agenda building. 152. 4.8. Eden’s failure at internal and external agenda building. 165. Chapter 5. Iraq 2003 165. 5.1. Background to the 2003 Iraq conflict. 175. 5.2. The embedded reporting strategy evolution. 188. 5.3. How the embedded reporter strategy worked for the media. 200. 5.4. How the embedded reporter strategy worked for the authorities. 217. 5.5. Relationships between media, media minders and military. 220. Chapter 6. Analysis and Conclusions 220. 6.1. Official sources and the release of information to the media 227. 6.2. Censorship during conflict. 233. 6.3. The media and official sources 238. 6.4. Media management and official disinformation 247. 6.5. Media agenda building strategy: The lessons of Suez 264. Bibliography 8 Chapter 1. Introduction. Governments at war or planning for war need to garner support from those who elected them: they need to build an agenda which is calculated to win a majority within the country which supports the war aims and objectives. Elected politicians do have their own agenda, which may come from their personal political beliefs, their support for party policy or, simply the need to gain power. Non-elected media moguls have their agendas too – support for one political party, opposition to another, the need to profit from publication and, perhaps, the desire to force change in the political agenda of a party for personal or conglomerate gain. In terms of these “dynamics” it is intended to look at the construction of a political agenda mainly from the government point of view, in other words how the UK government planned its media-handling policy in time of conflict in order favourably to influence the media and win support for its war aims and to justify its taking military action. In both the cases studied there was substantial internal UK opposition to taking military action and each government had to put in place a media-handling mechanism to win support for its political and military agenda. Therefore this study sets out to assess the current literature on agenda setting and agenda building in order to consider and evaluate existing knowledge and ideas relevant to the dissertation title: Winning or losing media support for regime change: A comparative analysis of UK government media agenda building during the Suez 1956 and Iraq 2003 conflicts.